Jean Hyppolite

Jean Hyppolite (January 8, 1907 – October 26, 1968)[1] was a French philosopher known for championing the work of Hegel, and other German philosophers, and educating some of France's most prominent post-war thinkers.

In 1952, Hyppolite published Logique et existence, a work that may have had a seminal effect on what was to become known as Post-modernism. This book tries to correlate Hegel's Phenomenology to his Logics (longer and shorter). In doing so, it raises the questions of language, being, and difference that were to become the hallmarks of new French philosophy at the end of the 20th century. One excellent hint at the importance and centrality of this book is found in Gilles Deleuze's review of it. The translators of the English language edition of the text (SUNY Press, 1997) were thoughtful enough to bundle Deleuze's review at the rear of the volume.

In 1954, he became the director of the École Normale Supérieure and in 1955 produced a study of Karl Marx's earlier, more Hegelian period, at a time when the French interest in Hegel was at its apogee.[2] In 1963 he was elected to the Collège de France and given a chair in The History of Systems.